Portable data storage devices capable of holding, recording and/or playing digital content are becoming more prevalent. For example, it is now not uncommon for a mobile telephone to be able to record and/or play back video, take and/or display pictures, record and/or play back sound files including MP3 files and the like; download and/or upload files from the Internet or other networks. This is equally true of other mobile devices such as cameras, MP3/MP4 players (a generic term used to refer to portable music/video playing devices such as the iPod™, or the like).
There is often a desire for a user to move data onto and/or from the portable data storage device. This data movement can be to take newly generated data (such as a photograph, video, etc.) off the device in order to store it for archival purposes or share it with a set of users through a common data storage, and/or to add new data to the device or subsequent playback (for example the addition of a new music file which may be a song, a podcast, etc.), a video, etc.
Such movement of data can typically occur via a number of mechanisms. For example, some devices may be connected to a personal computer such as a PC, Apple™, etc. which subsequently performs the data movement. Other devices, can move data via telecommunication networks such as a GSM (Global System for Mobile communications), UMTS (Universal Mobile Telecommunications System) network or the like. Yet further devices can communicate with wireless networks such as a WIFI (IEEE 802.11x where x is any number of letters) network, or the like.
However, telecommunications networks such as GSM, UMTS networks and the like are not intended to transmit high bandwidth data such as video, music, etc. As such the quality of data received on the data storage device may not be suitable to view in what is generally termed real time. Further, such networks are expensive to use and as users can be faced with high usage costs to transfer data across them.
Also, movement of data to and/or from a portable device typically requires significant user intervention which often deters users from moving the data. As such, newly generated data is at risk of being lost because users may tend to leave the data only on the mobile device and as such if the device is lost or broken then the data is gone. Alternatively, the memory of a device may become full or the number of files may become excessive making data hard to access as users may not remove files because it is hard to manage data on the restricted user interfaces of typical portable data storage devices
Further, these devices do not offer a way to share the data with a set of users because of limited or no networking capability (e.g. digital photo camera, mp3 player, thumbdrive) unless the user transfers the data to a personal computer and then to it's final destination where the content will be shared. (e.g. a web based photo album, a video sharing network such as YouTube™).